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Scales for business
Are trade-approved scales with certification necessary or are standard scales without being trade-approved (with certificate?) sufficient for running a home-business where I weigh butters and oils in grams and label my products in grams? Could you recommend a scale which weighs up to 2-5kg? Force-motor scales are quite interesting and generally seem to be more expensive than the strain-gage load cell scales; are they worth the expense if I will be selling creams and balms and possibly perfume in the future (very far future)?
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7 Replies
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for a home business any reputable scale should be fine they give the +/- on the scale. business is expected to be 4% within the given range.
many people use chinese lab scales which work fine for them too.
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I personally found that the economy scales Uline sells are very high quality. I think they are only in North America, not sure.
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In the UK, Adam equipment and Ohaus scales look good
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@Cafe33, agreed, I have a Uline 3Kg scale (0.1g increments) that came with two 500g calibration weights, plastic cover, and power supply, and it’s the scale I use most frequently. Really good item.
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I’m also confused about what are the EU/UK legal requirements when it comes to scales. I was advised that:
1) to weight finished products the scale would have to weigh in increments of 0.1g, be trade-approved and sent to calibration yearly;
2) while to weigh ingredients for manufacturing the scale would have to weigh in increments of 0.01g, no need to be trade-approved and should be calibrated in-house by us (but I’m not sure what calibration frequency is ideal GMP).
Some scales have, in addition to the “d” symbol for resolution, an<font face=”inherit”> “e” symbol for verification, which I’m also not sure if there </font>are <font face=”inherit”>any requirements regarding that. Does anyone hold any accurate information that could be helpful or insights about the practice in your country? Many thanks!</font>
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well, I think a scale for 2 kg should be able to give information about 0.01g increments so that your actives, etc can be weight correctly in any way if you go for the 0.5 % weight variance per increment/ Ingredient
In Europe, u need to have a protokoll bock for your scale and it needs to be calibrated 1 time a year. which means you need to have a Standard 100 g weight and show that it still is not more than 0.01 g away from that 100g if you put it on after that it is ok for 1 year once a year you need to send away the standard weight to be checked externally.
For Pharma GMP you would need to Test every day in the same manner and once a year a control person from outside the company needs to be there to check if what you are noting down in the Logbook is accurate and if the scale still works how it should be. although you need to check your standard 100g weight every 3 months.
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I have always had very good results with Ohaus scales.